Despite pleas from several City Council members and over 15,000 letters from their constituents, Mayor Michael Bloomberg declined to extend funding for a day care voucher program that heavily benefits Orthdox communities.

The Priority 7 funding, which allows payments of of up to $300 per week per eligible child for afterschool programs, will end this month.

Singles are discovering that, yes, there is life beyond the Upper West Side. From the boroughs to Teaneck, is geography
really dating destiny?

Rivka Oppenheim

Special To The Jewish Week

12/07/2010

Call it The Great Singles Migration. OK, Almost Great.

Liz Wallenstein is one of the new émigrés. The 31-year-old psychotherapist lived in both Washington Heights and the Upper West Side before moving to Flatbush, a Brooklyn neighborhood known more for its kosher pizza options than for an active singles scene.

“I wasn’t in love with the West Side,” said Wallenstein. “I had been there for four years. I felt like I was there because I didn’t know where else to be.

With its size and sizzle, New York is a singles paradise. Here, grazing your shoulder on the packed 1 train; there, peering at you from behind a folded Times in line at the Angelika, a soul mate calls. Multiply that close encounter by — what? — a million. A gambler — or a single guy or gal — would take those odds.

Wood, in Manhattan District Court, ordered the recess of the trial Monday after learning of the birth of Bennett Epstein's grandson. Epstein had filed a motion last month asking for a "writ of possible simcha" in order to attend a brit in Philadelphia if his daughter gave birth to a boy.

(JTA) -- New York is about to lose its last two state kosher inspectors.

The state's Department of Agriculture and Markets will eliminate the jobs as part of a statewide effort to achieve $250 million in work force savings, according to the Times Union in Albany. The department once had 11 kosher inspectors.

Explaining its decision to lay off the final two inspectors, the department told reporters that the jobs have become obsolete since a 2004 change in the state’s kosher law prevented state inspectors from enforcing Orthodox standards of kashrut.